Jeffrey Nachmanoff‘s science fiction thriller, Replicas, features Keanu Reeves as a brilliant neuroscientist in the depths of mourning. After a tragic accident involving his wife, son, and two daughters, William Foster conjures up an incredibly daring, controversial attempt at piecing his life back together. In a Black Mirror-esque twist of fate, as one can predict, things don’t go as planned for the widowed father. Foster’s half-hazardously glued-together plan quickly unravels as he finds himself brushing up against the law and various schools of science he once worshiped. The at-times kitschy 2018 film explores a convoluted yet thrilling tale of desperation, grief, and gripping action.
Replicas is a murky cocktail of different films. Think Ex Machina, Her, with just a dash of Frankenstein. The main similarity, of course, is that it centers around a failed attempt to recreate human consciousness in a lifeless, technological form. Notably, despite having expert performers like Reeves at the helm, Replicas, unlike the other films, registers as a lowbrow escapist flick. Thus, one can simply sit back, relax, and enjoy the scientific-word-salad script writing and cliché plot for exactly what it is: pure entertainment.
The Interesting Concept and Delightfully Mindless Execution of ‘Replicas’
As stated prior, tragedy is what propels this plot forward. When the Foster family takes a vacation on a whim, they get into a violent and evidently fatal car accident, killing each of William’s children, Sophie (Emily Alyn Lind), Matt (Emjay Anthony), and Zoe (Aria Lyric Leabu), as well as his wife Mona (Alice Eve). Now, instead of taking a nod from stories of a similar ilk, like Black Mirror’s “Black Museum,” for example, when a widower inserts his wife’s consciousness into his own brain, in a much less physical and more imaginative, fade-to-black sort of way, Replicas takes a much more morbid route.
William’s first thought was to clone them, of course. It should also be heavily noted that he came to this decision practically seconds after realizing they had died. Additionally, to do so, William has to hide the dead bodies of his loved ones in his basement as he scrambles to sew them back together and recreate their consciousness in a new form. This results in a striking ambiguity to William’s morality. From here on out, it grows more and more difficult to decipher whether this is a protagonist one should root for, or a crazed scientist pushed to lunacy from such heartbreaking grief. The perfect word to describe the film as it unfolds is: ludicrous. While it may not necessarily be an artful or even technically good rendition of a classic premise, it is most certainly gripping for that very reason.
The 2018 sci-fi thriller won audiences over for its campy, B-tier charm despite earning a lackluster response from critics. Some pointed to the muddy visual effects and unbelievably ludicrous plot as its weaknesses. However, for those looking for pure unabashed entertainment, those are the defining qualities of the film itself. Replicas is by no means reinventing the wheel; however, for those looking for a late-night, guilty pleasure sci-fi flick, it’s a top contender.
